Car museum worth price of admission
O ver the Fourth of July holiday weekend my wife and I traveled south to visit a friend. As part of our trip, we took in the Petersen Automotive Museum in the heat of downtown Los Angeles.
The Petersen museum opened just a couple of years ago and was founded by Robert Petersen, founder of Hot Rod and Motor Trend magazines — must reads for anyone interested in cars. I grew up on Motor Trend because it always featured what the new models cars will look like. I recall those secret photos they captured of next year’s Impala or Ford Mustang they would get and publish.
The museum is spread out over three floors and admission is just $15 for adults. There is also Vault Tours available of the vehicles which are not currently on display. That is an extra price. As suggested, we started out on the third floor and coming off the elevator we were excited to see all the vehicles. That floor is referred to as the History floor and has vehicles of all types and eras, including several which played roles in movies or television shows. We saw the Delorean used in the “Back to the Future” movies, as well as Herbie, the Volkswagen beetle used in the 2000 remakes of that Disney classic. There was also the Batmobile from the most recent “Batman” movies, as well as the Ferrari Tom Selleck drove in the TV show “Magnum PI.”
Of course, there was a Ford Model T and there were several concept cars — cars of the future which never really made it to production. Those were eye catching because they did resemble a car from your past, but looked very different. There was one, if I recall, a Chrysler, where we could not find the gas cap. It was not an electric vehicle, so we were left wondering.
The second floor is referred to as the Industry floor which included several different vehicles. You could even sit down and design a car if you wanted.
The first floor had two special displays right now. The first was The Art of Bugatti which included several Bugattis going back nearly 100 years. Those are beautiful cars and huge. Some are big enough inside to call home. Also on that first floor was a feature on lowrider vehicles and the artwork on those cars, all Chevrolets, was remarkable. There was one 1964 Chevrolet up on stands with its wheels taken off that had to take years to paint and chrome almost everything. The detail that went into that vehicle, as well as several others, was amazing.
There were also two areas devoted to racing. The Dan Gurney collection had everything from Formula 1 race cars to Indy race cars. There was also an area donated by the Bobby Rahal Family, again a variety of race cars driven by the racing great.
This month there is also a show on Ferraris and the bright red vehicles spanned over 50 years of automobile engineering.
As you walk through you do get the sense you are in a museum and each vehicle, and several motorcycles, tell stories of their time and place in the development of travel. There is an area devoted to energy alternative vehicles, including a hydrogenpowered car and a 1913 electric-powered car. They even have a General Motors EV1, the 1996 GM electric car which was only produced for four years.
Being downtown, when we finished our tour, we walked a couple of short blocks to the La Brea Tar Pits. I have always wanted to see that and while we did not go into the museum, you can walk around outside in Hancock Park and learn the history and see black tar bubbling out of the ground. There are several tar pits spread out over the park which you can walk through at no cost. There are paleontologists still sifting through the pits because millions of animals dating back centuries were entombed in the pits. According to the website, more than 3.5 million fossils have been discovered there.
According to the information provided, the tar pits were discovered in the early 1800s and the tar was used for roads and roofs. At one time, there were 70 oil wells at the site, but those are all gone now.
Definitely another place to visit.